


Ampersands

by docnoctem



Category: Gorillaz
Genre: Casual misogyny, F/M, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Multi, Murdoc displaying worrisome sexual behaviors, Paula + 2Doc: the bad decision trio, Recreational Drug Use, UK-specific homophobic slur, Unhealthy Relationships, and non-recreational drug addiction, bashing of talented sophistipop band Everything but the Girl, just wants to be degraded a little too much, regrettable threesomes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-27 23:22:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20768636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/docnoctem/pseuds/docnoctem
Summary: “In some ways that’s the worst of it: he’s not convinced she really likes Murdoc under her skirt as much as she just doesn’t want Stu holding down her hem.”A handful of scenes set around the unstable relationship between Stuart, Murdoc, and Paula.





	Ampersands

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Just a note that I love all three of these characters and the messy tirefire of their relationships-- no one is on their best behavior and no one is solely at fault for having pieces that don't fit. This leans very 2Doc, but this is not a Paula-slander story. If she comes across badly, I promise Stu and Murdoc come across worse. Everyone's allowed to be a trainwreck! Cheers! Thanks for indulging me, hope you enjoy!

`I.`

“…That’s when I knew, y’know, that I was gonna be summin’. I was gonna be a star.”

“Mhmm.”

“And then Casey Barton— he was goalie, the wanker— whacked my ankle out from under me. I would’ve gone to league if he hadn’t. He was alright early season but he cracked under pressure, couldn’t stand that I was the Zola an' he’d be third call for ballboy. He was right fuckin’ ugly too. Real squatty.”

She makes a vague noise of acknowledgment, less in understanding and more in recognition that he was, in fact, still talking.

“Should've played better keeper that low to the ground, y'know?"

“Right.”

“Worked out alright though, dinnit? It’s like, that was just another way, ‘nother way I coulda gone. Beckham wouldn’ta been Beckham if Chelsea’d had a Tusspot. But I wasn’t meant to be a star there. I was meant to be a star here. I didn’t know it, but maybe I did know it, y’know?” He grins like that means anything at all and breathes a short dizzy laugh, hoping to prompt her to join him. “S’like, uh, Kermit? What’s it— er, like my fate?”

“Kismet.”

“Yeah, or destiny, or whatever. Cut a record, sing on stage, get in the papers. That’s what I was meant for.” He points decisively at nothing in particular. “If I’d seen myself back then, seen all I was gonna be, I would’ve put a knee in Casey’s fat fuckin’ mouth. Wouldn’t hardly hafta reach for it.”

He pauses and takes a hit of the joint they’re sharing, appreciating how clean she always rolls it, and savors the way his mind seems to go out of focus with the pull. It’s probably not real, that feeling of the smoke clouding and muffling the sound inside— and it’s not as if his mind’s especially noisy as it is— but it’s enough to think it. Stu’s learned that the wanting isn’t so different from the having. In truth, he hadn’t spent his life dreaming of being a rockstar, because he hadn’t spent his life dreaming of anything in particular. It was simply made an option for him; it was a calling he could try for size, and he’s found the look quite suits him.

“I’ll be massive on stage. Look right, look fit. S’gonna be crowds all around, yeah, an’ they’ll stare and they’ll say, _that’s_ a proper rockstar. Just hope they can capture that when it’s in the papers and all. I mean, if they’re down on the floor, won’t they be getting all the shots up my nose?”

Pinching the joint in one hand, he drags the other up into the air and splays it out as far as it’ll go, spreading his fingers wide above him until there’s a great valley between each one. He rolls his ankles forward, flattens his long feet and points his toes, stretches his body out to a comedic length over the edge of the bed. He likes to observe himself when he’s feeling like this, to see as much Stuart as he can see.

“Actually, they probably _should_ take the pictures from below. Stood up high, bright lights all 'round me— I’ll look like a god.” He can hear his voice drop at the end of his sentence, can feel it swelling and sinking in his chest. He swallows around that and idly tacks on “D’you reckon they let you look through ‘em, pick the best one before they run it?”

She doesn’t bother with a response.

Stu looks sidelong at her and pops the joint between his teeth, tightening his bite and rolling onto his side to face her. Paula’s settled comfortably on her stomach with some music rag she’d nicked from Russ spread out in front. She reeks of weed but he knows he reeks worse, and the studio— Kong, Murdoc had declared, so Kong they were calling it without a vote— perfumes everything inside with decay. The earthy and undead stink of the condemned grounds is only masked by the stronger chemical scent from rebuilding. He’s not such a fan of the crumbling ceiling raining bits of off-white on them as they shag, but he’s a real fan of how lightheaded the wet paint and plaster keeps him. Paula doesn’t seem especially engrossed by the article, but she’s evidently less engrossed by him.

He frowns and tries to walk his fingers along her shoulder, but can’t coordinate well enough to keep the steps in sync. “S’my life boring t’you?”

“It’s a riot,” she drawls unapologetically, “just without the looting and the car fire and the reason to be there.”

He drapes an arm across her back and she takes the opportunity to steal the joint back from him. He watches her breathe in what’s left of it, smoke still spilling from the corners of her mouth as she wets her thumb and swipes the lingering glow of orange to black.

“I wasn’t done with that,” he objects.

“You are. You’re a bit easier on the eyes than the ears,” she says, the tone beneath her already strong accent sounding especially harsh. Lips pursed, he leans his head against her and glances down at the spread.

She’s opened to an interview with Sonic Youth. There’s a black and white shot of Kim Gordon printed off in the corner and a smaller photo of Courtney Love bubbled next to her, presumably in reference to producing for Hole, or rumors of collaboration or of feuding, or some other excuse to overlay and compare them like fruits at the market.

Kim looks stern and serious, the long drop of her nose seeming stubbed by her mouth pursed upward in concentration. The Gibson strapped to her is nearly as long as she is tall, but her presence stands head and shoulders above it. Looking at her, Stuart wonders how Paula’s energy would play to a crowd, wonders how she’d look on stage in that tight vest. He doesn’t find Kim especially attractive or unattractive, but he’s twenty and he hasn’t had a wank since the morning; he’s staring at her lips frozen near enough to a pout, at her stomach stretched taut above the bass, at the hint of her navel obscured behind it.

Courtney looks on to the side, all mussed bleach-blonde hair and diamond eyes. She smiles like something’s gone terribly amiss and she’s hiding it in a show dress, in a punishing song made fairer by the drink. She’s beautiful. She’s exhilarating in the wrong way. She’d frighten him if he weren’t high. Instead he pictures her naked, watching him that intently, then buries his face in Paula’s shoulder and works his free arm under her. With his forehead pressed down and his eyes forced to the foot of the bed, he takes in the sloppy, uneven chunks of hair scattered above her shoulders, takes in the curve of her spine under her t-shirt, takes in the stark black line where her skirt ends against her thighs. She should frighten him too; in ways, she does.

He palms at her breast and she flips the page.

“You going somewhere with that, Pot?”

“I’ll go where you want me to go,” he says lowly, one arm bent to cradle her shoulder with the other trapped awkwardly beneath her.

“Sure we’ll find evidence of that any day now,” she mutters.

He moves both hands to her waist and with some difficulty turns them both over, maneuvering her into his lap. She hikes her skirt up to straddle him more comfortably and leans forward as his sprawling hands creep under her shirt, pawing at her and shoving the white cotton up until it’s bunched at the collarbone. He cranes his neck to nuzzle her chest but comes up short as she settles back down against his groin, finding a sitting position with her reading in hand.

He eyes the magazine reluctantly. “You want to put that down?”

“You want to put that in?” She nods to his groin, gaze never straying from the page. “Then less lip.”

“I can’t see your tits.” He tries to put the pout in his voice.

“You’ll manage.”

“But I like seeing your tits.”

“Heart’s shattered, Stu, it is.”

If he rolls his head to the side enough, he can see the slope of her breasts under the page’s edge. She rocks idly as she continues to read until he bucks once, then twice, and her hips slow to nothing more than an occasional shift while he ruts up against her. Movement catches his eye and his stare drifts from her chest for a moment, watching her chipped nail tap against the glossy cover.

The girl splashed across the front is called Fiona, apparently. She’s backlit in a watery photo, her dark hair swimming behind her like one of those spiked halos in an old religious painting. Stu doesn’t know much about her except she’s American, and she looks to be some sort of sad-rocker, and she’s got an awfully round mouth. The blue light illuminating the water washes her out to a palette of whites and browns and little in between, and there’s something oddly intimate about the way she’s looking at him. The sides are lined with text about awards for Radiohead and The Verve, but his eyes are drawn back up to hers. There’s something soft there, he supposes, something needy. He likes that. He likes the dark of her hair and the plush of her lips, but mostly he likes the idea that she’d need him.

_You're perfect. I want you, Stu. Want it all._

He can see someone in his mind. She looks like Paula, but she sounds much frailer, much gentler. She sounds like she’d do anything for him.

_Please. Oh god, touch me, please._

Knobby thumbs press dents into her thighs, overlong fingers curling nearly all the way around them.

_Oh, Stuart. Oh god, you’re so big. Please, Stu, please…_

He feels like a spring coiled as tight as it can go.

_There’s no one like you Stuart, no one, oh Stu—_

“—Have you spunked your pants?”

He barely hears his own grunt over the loud breath straining through his nose. Stu’s nostrils flare with his panting, and after a beat he opens the eyes he’d apparently screwed shut. He can feel that coil in his abdomen unwinding but suspects they _both_ feel the burning friction in his briefs going cool and damp. He doesn’t know if she really expects him to answer that. She’s sat against him; it should go without saying.

She pulls her shirt back down and moves off him, folding her magazine in half to hold it with one hand. He watches as she slides the other unhurriedly down the front of her skirt, lazily working herself while she reads. He swallows hard, unsure what his approach is meant to be with his cock out of commission.

“Should I—” He’s too stoned and slack with orgasm to make much of an offer. “Do you want me to help?”

Paula looks sidelong at him, her eyebrows pinched in annoyance at the continued interruptions. After a moment she gives him a condescending smirk, her wrist rolling with practiced ease. He loves her mouth, but he feels least like the Stuart of his stories under her smile.

“I don’t think you can.”

`II.`

Stu idles in the hall outside the kitchen, just watching the two stand together. It’s strange, seeing the way they share a space; it’s hard to place it squarely and sends his mind fuzzy and frantic. Paula’s at the stove in her knickers and one of Stu’s t-shirts, atrociously orange against her skin and hanging halfway to her knees, while Murdoc scratches his arse and dips into the fridge for a cider and a jar of loose olives. She’s clutching one of Murdoc’s stained mugs with the handle broken off. They aren’t whispering, not really, it’s just that their still-hungover mutterings are too low, too droning for him to hear this far back.

Judging by the shells smashed to nearly nothing on the countertop, Paula’s got raw eggs in the mug; she sloppily scrambles them by flattening her hand over the top and sloshing it about. When she drags her palm away, she scrapes it along the rim to catch as much viscous residue as possible, then wipes the remainder on the bottom of Stu’s shirt.

Murdoc sets the olives down while he cracks his cider, scowling at something she’s just said, and Paula barely covers her short sharp laugh in response. It sounds abrasive and unattractive; it sounds _real,_ and it makes Stuart’s stomach clench.

He watches how Murdoc slumps in on himself, all his bullishness and grandiosity seeming to flatten there with his cider, leaving him small and crooked. It’s an odd look on Murdoc, one that suits him no better than the dick-swinging ego but no worse than anything suits such an ugly prick. He slurps at the lip of the can pointedly and then clicks his tongue on his teeth. She must ask him for a smoke, and he obliges.

Paula pours the barely mixed eggs into the pan on the stovetop and pops a cigarette in her mouth, then bends ‘til she’s level with the gas flame to light it. It’s as Stu’s tilting his head for a glimpse of her knickers that Murdoc moves opposite to crack his neck, and catches Stuart’s eye in the doorway.

A switch seems to flip in his body language. Where he was lax, he’s suddenly leering, making a show of stretching his spine left and then right, dipping himself sideways to ogle Paula’s arse. He stays down once she’s stood again and says something Stuart can’t hear, something fucking rank he’s sure, and Paula grips him by the jaw hard enough for Murdoc to go rather convincingly slack before hauling him up.

Murdoc settles back again with the counter’s edge prodding into him, gaze fixed on Stuart’s. Stu’s face is hardened and hot with accusation he’s sure, but it only seems to goad Murdoc on. The older man winks at him as he sips his cider and angles his crotch forward. Paula rocks the eggs back and forth a bit, barely scrambling the thick splatterings of yolk in with the whites. She takes a pull off her cigarette then ashes into the pan, giving the whole thing another shake to disperse it.

Murdoc finishes his cider shortly and grabs the olives again. He makes to unscrew the cap and suddenly Stu’s hit with an image of him dumping that jar into the eggs. He thinks of Paula plating up a hot pungent breakfast for him, then thinks of Murdoc sat at the head of the kitchen table with his girlfriend dutifully at his side, taunting him with his winnings. In a flash he’s stomping to the oven, overlong feet nearly smashing into the metal base with his stride.

Before Paula can even look up at him he’s practically encasing her with his towering frame.

“S’alright actually, I don’t much fancy olives. Sort of greasy, aren’t they? Sort of foul?” He crinkles his nose mock playfully as his arm winds around Paula like a sickly-looking snake. “You have ‘em and you just feel a bit rubbish after, y’know what I mean?”

Stu pulls Paula closer to his chest, puffing it forward and eyeing Murdoc’s shapeless figure in return. His mouth quirks in a challenge.

“Real decent of you to try’n help though, mate. Cheers.” He’s never sounded less sincere.

Murdoc, much to his mounting annoyance, doesn’t seem at all put off by Stuart. Face absolutely delighted at Stuart’s hardman posturing, he flicks the unscrewed cap off the jar and lets it clatter to the floor, then takes a nauseating swig of oil and olives. Popping their casings between his teeth, he mutters around his rancid and dripping mouthful “S’not for you, _mate._”

Paula stubs out her cigarette on the counter, her last pull of smoke filtering out over the eggs. Stu cringes a bit at the separated colours and overcooked edges, looking more like one oblong lump of dry whites and half-wet yolks than a proper scramble. His hand finds her lower back and he presses a kiss to her hairline, whispering his thanks, how scrummy that smells, how good she looks in his shirt. His lips brush against her temple as his eyes find Murdoc’s over her head. He glares pointedly and Murdoc flashes a toothy grin, shiny green juices running over his bottom lip.

“Stuart,” Paula interrupts their silent cock-measuring, a hand on his chest pressing him back, “Get a fork or something.”

Stu lifts his head to smirk victoriously. He gives a quick rub above her arse then dips into the drawer down the counter, rummaging out any clean utensil he can spot and briefly catching Murdoc’s eyes on his bare back as he turns around again.

He’s about to ask Murdoc to _g’on and fetch me a plate, yeah? _when Paula plucks the fork from his knobby fingers and grabs the hot pan up by the handle. She takes a bite of the eggs, still simmering right where they are, and brushes past the two. With a nondescript gesture that might be _thanks_ but more likely _piss off, th’both of you,_ she shuffles out the doorway and down the hall.

The grin splitting Murdoc’s face could clear a timber yard.

“So no sharesies then?” Murdoc swishes the olive jar at him. Stu watches the door to be sure she’s out of earshot, then rounds on the smaller man.

“What were you talking about?” Murdoc just takes another swig of olive juice.

“This and that. Brookside’s gone and lost the plot, have you heard Barry’s left now as well?”

“Were you talking about me?”

It feels like he can see the clock hands ticking in Murdoc’s stare.

“Oh, isn’t everyone?”

“They will be.”

Murdoc grins at him. “Cheeky twat.”

Stu doesn’t feel much like being ‘cheeky,’ though. He moves close enough to loom and appreciates the way Murdoc stiffens, pointedly not looking straight ahead at his chest.

“Fuck off, you’re not clever. I see your bloody games, alright? And it’s sad, really, it is. You think you’re in the running for somethin’, but all I see is a sore loser dragging his arse on the track.”

“Surprised you can see much of anything.” Murdoc darts a split nail back and forth between his black sunken eyes. “Afraid they’ve finally gone to pot, Pot. Tell me, how many fingers’m I holding up?” He twists his wrist around to flip him off. Stu just shakes his head.

“I could kick the shit out of you, if it were worth it.” It’s an empty threat and they both know it; Stuart’s all lank and lumber and he hasn’t a clue what to do with it. “S’not though. You’re second rate, second an’ then some.”

“That right? What’s that make you then, nancy?”

“Your meal ticket, prick.” Stuart juts his jaw nearer to his face. “I’m the reason you’re not rotting in your own pissed-in Santa suit down the shops right now. You owe me.”

“‘Course, good t’see that train’s still running. Rain or shine, eh? Saved your sorry life and _I_ owe _you?”_

“Fuck you,” he hisses between his gapped teeth, lips barely parting at all.

“Y’know what? You’re like a goddamn child, no fuckin’ gratitude. Drove you to hospital for months, brought you out your coma—”

“Put me in my coma, you absolute cunt!” Stuart slams his fist down on the stovetop and catches the still-hot grate covering the burner. Broiling pain instantly shoots up his arm. _“FUCK!”_

He swears and screeches unintelligibly, whipping his hand back and cradling it to his chest as panicked tears spring to the corners of his eyes. He tries willing it away, but his will’s always been lacking; the pain’s just _there_ and it’s hot and it hurts, and he wants his mum to patch him up, wants her close enough to make a fuss over him. He wants Paula to do it in her place. Instead, he has to glare up through the blur to see the way Murdoc’s recoiled. The other man swallows, then with seeming effort, curls his lip disparagingly and gestures to his reddening palm.

“Christ, calm down. Fuck’s sake, here, give it—”

“Don’t touch me!” Stu snarls, blinking through the wetness. “Don’t fucking touch me. And— _shit_— and don’t ever touch Paula. Hear me? Quit your sniffin’ around her like the fuckin’ dog you are. She’s mine, alright?”

He brings the burn up to his face and mouths at it, then blows on the spit-slick skin. Murdoc’s face sours with mockery, his curled lip seeming genuine now.

“Is that why you’ve got to tell it? Wouldn’t know otherwise.”

Stu glowers at him then shoves him back, Murdoc’s olives sloshing onto the floor. Ignoring the curses that follow, he stalks out into the sitting room to find the television tuned to the less attractive set of ITV presenters. Paula’s sat cross-legged on the sofa, pan hovering above her lap. Stu wishes she’d drop it and cradle his injured hand there, whisper sympathies while he rests on her shoulder. He wishes she’d even look up when he entered a room.

“The fuck was that?” She asks as he tries to wedge himself halfway behind her.

“What was what?”

“I heard you yowl.”

“...Heard me what?”

“Yowl.” She doesn’t turn to see his brows scrunch and evidently doesn’t need to. “Fucking shouted, y’alright?”

“Oh yeah, yeah. S’fine, y’know, it was nothing. You know me and Murdoc.” He brushes an uneven chunk of hair from her neck and plants a kiss there. She doesn’t ask again.

The presenters natter on about a dog park or something, but the woman’s collar goes up too high for Stu to really appreciate her laugh. He picks a brownish-white bit of egg out of the pan with his bare fingers, the edges gone lukewarm now, and pops it on his tongue. It’s dense like dried putty and tastes of nothing.

He fixes his stare on the growing hole in the middle of the pan. “What were you two talking about?”

“Cast changes on Corrie,” she says flippantly. The line of Stu’s mouth tightens.

`III.`

He’d fancied himself a real heartthrob, catching her about the waist and dragging her down into his lap for anyone to see— 'anyone' being Murdoc, ideally. Gorilla had a name now, but the band still lacked much of an image, let alone tangible material for an album. Russel was working with his beat machine in the studio and rather disinterested in having company, as far as Stu knew, while Murdoc had promptly fucked off to the toilets after Stu’d made his brilliantly bog-standard romantic gesture.

They were meant to be writing, but Stu just doesn’t reckon he’s much of a pen-to-paper sort of artist. He supposes it’s something to do with his eyes, or perhaps the pills he’d thrown back with breakfast already, but maybe he’s just one of those great creatives who simply feels the music, knows the right measure when he hears it.

He’d popped on a cassette in place of actually writing, but Paula’s strutting— side to side and back again like bleeding Wimbledon, her tattered notebook in hand— was making him dizzy. When the tape had begun he imagined he’d let her sink back into him, let her roll her head into the crook of his neck and feel how he hardens underneath her, _for_ her. Ten minutes in, however, it’s clear all the candy and codeine’s not especially conducive to languid late-afternoon grinding. Her slender frame feels a lot bonier against him when she sits forward like she is, jotting down ideas and then scratching them out. By the time the first side ends, his right leg’s fallen asleep. He tightens one arm and pulls her flush to his flaccid crotch, pins and needles running up to his knee.

She taps on the hand locked around her waist like he needs reminding that it’s there.

“I can’t change that ‘til you let go.”

“You’re just trying to get away from me,” he jokes, flatting his nose along her shoulder. He waits for her to laugh and thinks it’s a bit offputting that she doesn’t. Stu glances at her notebook but can’t make out the lines for all the angry black scratches. “Not working?”

“One of us is.”

“No, I mean, s’the music not working? It doesn’t, y’know, inspire you to write summin’?”

“Am I inspired by Everything but the bloody Girl?” She turns her head to give him an unimpressed look and he presses a quick peck to her jawline. “The fuck d’you even call this, techno-jazz?”

“It’s sophistipop,” he says with a brief finger flutter. “They have got jazzy roots though. S’funny actually, they were sort of like, smooth an’ acoustic before this alb—”

“Right, that’s what you’re bringing to the table then, acoustics? You impressing the girls with a nice bit of wood?” Stu purses his lips, one hand dipping to trace shapes on her inner thigh.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. So what’s happened today? Have you written us the synth lines in your head then? Or, I don’t know, something for you to bloody sing?”

He doesn’t answer, and she sighs and sinks as much as she can in his hold. She turns and tucks her forehead to him, her skin hot with frustration against his neck. Her hand raises to pat his cheek, but it doesn’t feel much like affection.

“I need you to try, Stuart.” She says it like she’s talking to a child; his tracing fingers move further up her skirt to remind her he’s not.

“...Let’s do Amplified Heart then, s’got Missing on it. You like that, yeah?”

“Not especially.”

“You do, c’mon, everyone does.”

“And I’m not everyone,” she says coolly. The hand on her thigh slows. Stu wonders what her eyes look like now, how her mouth must sit low and straight.

“I know you’re not.”

“Stu, I play guitar. And not fuckin’ Wonderwall, Fake Plastic Trees acoustic shite.”

“I know. S’plenty of room for that in electronica.”

“_Punk_ is not electronic.”

“When’d we decide Gorilla was punk?”

Paula laughs in disbelief. “What, you think it’s going to be _sophistipop?”_ She mimics his flutter and Stu frowns.

“Well, why not?”

It’s then that Murdoc reenters the room. His steps are so short and frantic that his body just jerks forward with his gait, one crooked finger rubbing at his gums. Paula gestures to him.

“You girls done with the arseplay in here?” Murdoc asks, kicking about bottles on the floor and ducking down to peer under the coffee table.

“Scared you missed your turn?” Paula replies, and if that’s a joke Stuart doesn’t find it very funny. The look Murdoc shoots her seems fairly muted for someone whose eyelids are still twitching involuntarily.

Murdoc moves to the other side of the sofa and begins ferreting around in the cushions. He buries his arm blindly all the way to his elbow, and given the amount of rusted metal springs hanging freely from every side Stu thinks that seems unwise. He wrenches it to and fro like something manic, his free hand grappling along the front in hopes he’s knocked his prize free.

Stu eyes him as he searches. “Looking for your whizz?”

Murdoc crowds his tongue up beneath his top lip, the skin bulging as he runs it over his gums. “Found that.”

“Never woulda guessed,” Stu mumbles against Paula’s neck.

Murdoc slows and looks the pair up and down, arm still hidden halfway in the stained chenille. He smirks and wriggles free, patting the cushions for show as he scoots his way toward their end of the sofa.

“You mind?” Murdoc leans forward, chin level with Paula’s chest. He meets Stuart’s glare over her shoulder, his own grin only growing seedier as he brackets them.

Murdoc’s hand slides beneath the cushion, and Stu’s sure he can feel every finger beneath his thigh like the princess and her rotted, obnoxious pea. He moves in further, close enough for his breath to ghost over Paula’s cleavage; Stuart snarls at him but he hasn’t got enough teeth to threaten. Murdoc tucks the other hand behind them, his arms practically linked around Stu’s hips now. The worn seat cushion isn’t nearly stuffed enough to separate him from the hand idling under his arse. He’s close to kicking him off when Murdoc hums his success, straightening back up and pulling a small plastic baggy of white powder with him.

“You just fuckin’ said you’d already found that,” Stu hisses, face gone red in anger and embarrassment.

Murdoc holds the bag up rather theatrically, looking to it with consideration, his nose crinkling from the draw of his brows below his fringe. “Didn’t find this one though, did I?” He taps it with his ring finger.

Pocketing the baggy in the back of his trousers, Murdoc meanders in place conspicuously, rotating his shoulders and cracking his neck, then dips forward and snatches Paula’s notebook before she can react.

“Oi, stickyfingers!”

“Not with your keeper here,” he says nodding to Stu. His expression doesn’t change as he looks over the black scratches and accidental rips. “Bit abstract, this.”

“Yeah yeah, fuck off. I can’t fuckin’ think right with that music.”

“What music?”

“Bloody sophistipop. How’m I meant to write my guitar lines to that? Or yours for that matter, lazy sod.”

“I’ve written plenty, ta.”

“Tell yourself that. Cheers for effort, I’m writing the ones we can use,” she says. Stu smirks from behind her, ducking sideways to be sure Murdoc sees him.

“Right, minding the bit where you’re not. Looks to me like you’re sat comfy in your chav chair getting shirty with Sade.”

“The fuck did you call me?” Stu tries and fails to interject. They talk around him like he really is just furniture.

“What’s the problem with the soph-pop again?”

“Sounds like— like grey, it sounds like what _grey_ sounds of.”

Murdoc seems lost as to why she’s played it then when it clicks, and the flat line of his mouth twitches up. His eyes tick back to Stuart.

“What’ve you got for us then, Ringo?” He waits, poorly covering his wicked grin.

Stu’s frown tugs at his face, nostrils flaring and cheeks heating. He wishes that something witty and biting would jump to the front of his mind, something absolutely brilliant to prove his value and cut the nasty scab standing there to size, but it all just feels kiddie and dull. Murdoc’s teeth double with his stretch of his smile.

“Ah,” he says, like it means something it doesn’t.

“‘Ah’ what? You got somethin’ to say?”

“Don’t,” Paula warns them, “don’t start. The both of you do my fuckin’ head in. How ‘bout all the grubby little boys sit down and shut their bloody traps, yeah?”

Murdoc’s smug stare doesn’t waver though. If anything he makes more of a show of rocking back on the balls of his feet, his whole countenance giddy and cruel.

“Well now, we’d hate to interrupt Stuey’s special thinking hour, wouldn’t we?” He leans forward and taps a finger on Stu’s temple. “The echo’s distracting, isn’t it?” Stu jerks away from him.

“Just switch the tape Murdoc, fucking Christ. You two are children.” Any pouting protest would only prove her right.

Murdoc laughs, wheezy and sputtering and too high in his throat, and walks over to the stereo. He pops the cassette deck open, but rather than flipping the tape he tosses it to the side, sifting instead through the mishmash of music left by everyone else over the week. Stu looks away, bringing his free hand to Paula’s middle and fiddling his fingers under her shirt, just wandering enough to brush her stomach. He buries his nose in her hair, breathes in the lingerings of smoke and cider.

He’s _got_ the girl. Murdoc is milk stuck in the freezer before expiry— he’s sun cream applied at 4:30— he’s ‘dusting’ on a chore list. Murdoc is an afterthought.

“Oh, nice one. This is what you were goin’ for, yeah?”

The tape starts, and it’s very much not. The female voices sound nothing like Tracey’s haunted crooning and all tend to knock into each other over a spacey, eclectic beat, decidedly more post-punk than punk.

“The Slits,” Paula says with an odd sort of amusement, like sharing a joke he’s not in on. It has a certain warmth, even if she doesn’t mean it to. He wishes he could see her expression but it’s bad enough to see it mirrored in Murdoc’s.

That familiar defensiveness swells in him. He knows it does him no good, knows it doesn’t flatter him in her eyes, but he doesn’t really know how to stop when she offers that voice to Murdoc.

“Thought butlers were s’posed to wear suits,” he says too quickly, so much he nearly slurs it.

“What was that?”

Stu swallows, jaw jutted to hide his quiver, and says louder “Who’s hiring help that doesn’t bathe? S’the least you could do to wash up, get a scrub under your crack nail. Sorry, _nails._”

Murdoc’s eye twitches, and Stu thinks it isn’t just for all the speed.

“That’s good. That’s good, yeah. You are quite used to being waited on, aren’t you? And you said you didn’t remember our romps in Nottingham, cheeky fibber.” His tongue darts to the edges of his crusted lips; the amount of purplish underside he shows is uneasy-making. “Sorry thing of it, though, I don’t really reckon y’do. Think you’ve been mashing up all those funny little dead-eyed pictures you’ve got in your poor gammy brain. See, I was more like your charming cabbie; dear mummy played maid and changed your bed pans. But now that you mention it, I would suit the suit, wouldn’t I?”

“You’d suit a split fuckin’ lip, you—” His face creases up. Stu’d like to smash it flat.

“Relax, m’just taking the piss. Bit like naughty nurse Tusspot in the morning, actually.” He makes an obscene noise low in his throat.

“You shut your fuckin’ mouth!” He shouts right in Paula’s ear. She knocks him with her shoulder and shoots him an annoyed scowl. “What? He’s talking about my mum! You know what I remember? I remember the manky motherfucker who ran me over, an’ I wish I didn’t! You’re goddamn right it’s a sorry thing I had to waste th’ eye I had left seein’ that!”

“Aw, diddums,” Murdoc purrs. He practically slithers over, eyes fixed on their overlapping legs. He puts on a cloying voice. “Now alright, c’mon then, I did my part, I were good t’you. Don’t you remember me cleaning bogies out your tubes and picking the ickle crusties ‘round your eye?” Murdoc’s gaze goes wide and wondering for a beat, but Stuart’s face is rock flowing molten underneath. It only eggs him on. “Fair turn. But I did tie these _same goddamned shoes._”

He suddenly drops before them, hands falling on either side of their knees. He scoffs at Stu’s oversized, well-greyed trainers.

“Christ, ‘course you’re still wearing these, probably special-ordered aren’t they? Looks like a bloody freightliner comin’ out your leg.”

“Yeah, fuckin’ go on then, see if you can’t get more familiar with it,” Stu spits, slurring further into cockney the redder he gets. Murdoc may as well bask in the spittle.

“They always left me to load you in and out on my tod. You were already dead weight to start but your stupid massive feet would drag ‘til you had your trainers half off. But see, now, I were generous about your smarts then. Thinkin’ you had ‘em, I mean. Knew you did a _champion_ stand, just top-notch dossing about, but I couldn’t speak to your talents for walking. I assumed it was, you know, the coma and all. But it doesn’t look like you’re lifting ‘em much more now, are you?”

He reaches out and yanks Stu’s ridiculous flat foot straight through Paula’s legs, nudging them apart around his thigh, and sets it in the opening between his own.

“Fair enough you were poorly with your brain knocked backwards, but what now? Don’t tell me— nice pretty piano fingers just don’t reach the way they used to? Pity.”

Murdoc’s sleazy stare falls right into Paula’s crotch as he tugs his laces tight, and Stu hopes to god she’s got knickers on; with his temper gone hot enough to make his tacky hands stick and peel from her skin, he dips one between her thighs and lightly touches a fingertip to the worn cotton there.

Something flickers across Murdoc’s face. His jaw shifts and his eyes grow glazen, his own fingers fumbling their loop. It feels like he can see the tendons in his neck tightening and his knees shifting outward, and he swallows around an uncomfortable recognition.

Stuart’s certain he’s acting purely in challenge when he sucks his bottom lip through his gap and presses his fingers firmer against Paula; Murdoc, in turn, pulls his long foot closer.

He expects Paula to elbow him in the ribs for sticking his hands where they weren’t invited, but instead she hums with knowing. She seems oddly enamored with Murdoc on his knees; whatever mind she pays Stuart, she seems to pay only in service of Murdoc's response. Stu once again senses something shared between them, but it doesn’t much feel like joking.

“You done yet?” Stuart asks, moving his hand and quickly tugging at the edge of her skirt. Murdoc snorts.

“If you had a quid, huh?” He says commiseratingly to Paula. Murdoc finishes knotting his left trainer, but he only seems to settle lower against the length of it after. He slides a hand up Paula’s thigh, the other gripping tight to the cushion beside Stu’s, sharp knuckles just brushing the denim.

“It takes patience, puttin’ their needs before yours, but _oh_, it’re rewarding,” he says faux-seriously. His thumbs rub circles into her skin while the rest of his fingers spread higher. “Do give me a shout when things get out of hand— I’d be happy to put them in mine.”

“You would, would you?” She asks in a voice Stuart knows too well: bemused and doubtful, chastising in a way that instinctively makes his hips twitch.

Murdoc’s tongue swipes his teeth for good measure, his smirk gleaming in the light like yellowed pearl as he casually lifts the finger hooked under her skirt.

“I live to serve.”

Stuart repays his giving spirit by stomping a freshly-laced trainer into his groin.

The hand on her thigh stays put, but the one on the sofa flies to Stuart’s calf, clutching hard enough to feel jagged nails through his jeans. Murdoc buckles in the opposite way he should; his shoulders roll forward and his back curves, the grip on his leg trembling where Stu thinks it ought to be violent. He turns his head, ducked and silent, that wagging tongue like a bleeding wellspring of backtalk suddenly run dry.

It dawns on him with something like horror how hard Murdoc is under his weight.

Paula’s hand finds his hair and her nails scrape his scalp gently, twisting through it and tugging a few stands down with her palm to cradle his jaw.

“Play nice, Stu,” she says.

Stuart rolls his ankle and hears Murdoc stifle a gasp. The hand on his leg drags to the top of his foot, fingers catching in the laces; he does nothing to move it off his cock.

“Think I am playin’ nice.”

Paula presses back against him fully, slight and soft like he’d wished her, her head tucking into the crook of his neck to watch the other man. Though he knows nothing will come of it, he rocks his hips up to meet her, stare fixed over the shoulder Murdoc’s head hangs away from.

`IV.`

When Stuart presses into Murdoc, he makes sure Paula’s eyes are on his.

She’d made the suggestion while they were sat in the studio, amps on eleven and mics all potted up to go nowhere. She said it might boost their productivity, that maybe the tension of the room was putting pressure on a creative valve, and all it needed was loosening. Stuart felt like he was hearing her at a distance even as she nipped at his ear. Truthfully, he just couldn’t think about it. (Didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t well know if he was capable of thinking about it.) But she’d asked, and she wanted it— and for all he’d wanted to have her, he wanted much more now to keep her. It wasn’t about the way Murdoc went stock-still at her description, or the way he stared searing, unreadable holes through Paula’s smirk. It wasn’t about the way he visibly swallowed and downed the rest of his drink but said nothing to disagree, the picture of him sat in silence so very opposite to the mania Stuart’s always known. It wasn’t even about the way he glanced at Stuart: tentative but hungry, tongue briefly wetting his bottom lip.

It wasn’t about Murdoc. It was about Paula, and him proving he’s the one she ought to want.

So he’s got his cock in Murdoc to show her.

It’s not what you’d call an ideal position, but the configuration they’d all agreed upon— some quicker than others— only offers so many options. Paula lies propped on her forearms to flatter her breasts with a look that effortlessly finds his smallest points, her smile as feline as Stu’s ever seen; Murdoc’s arranged between her legs, laying on her front more than he’s really kneeling. He hasn’t quite got the room to bend properly on his knees with Stuart so close at his back, flattening Murdoc down as far as he can.

It’s awkward, to say the least. Stuart’s nearly enveloping the two of them in his gangliness. His chin digs into Murdoc’s temple, tufts of the man’s hair catching on his lip, and he has to resist the urge to twist his fingers in and pull his head further away than it’s already craned. He can taste his unwashed fringe and his tongue curls in alarm, but he pushes forward ‘til his collarbone’s nearly melded into Murdoc’s shoulder just to hold Paula’s stare. He tries not to think of Murdoc’s body so pliant on his cock, or of Paula’s heat wrapped around Murdoc; he just tries to think of it as fucking his girlfriend through him.

It doesn’t take much for them to lose tempo as Murdoc fails to get his own footing, instead being compressed and pushed by Stuart’s movements alone. He never objects to the position, or the pace— in fact, after a time Murdoc’s head dips toward his chest, angled sideways by Stuart’s own, and Stu’s sure he’s holding his breath behind his fiercely bitten lip. His eyes crack open to meet Stuart’s only for an instant, rolling back when narrow hips knock him forward.

Paula wedges one arm between herself and Murdoc to seemingly keep him from dislodging as often as he does. Stu tries slipping a hand to her breast but his forearm drags against Murdoc’s chest hair, coarse and wet with sweat. He swallows hard, keeps his eyes on Paula’s grin, and pulls back.

Stu notices her arm shifting and circling, and there’s something familiar about it. He lifts a hand to Murdoc’s neck to adjust him, and the man grunts and arches, sinking himself deeper onto Stu’s cock. He sucks in a sharp breath and tampers down the sound rising in him. Paula’s knees bracket either side of Murdoc and he grips at them like a vice, squeezing them together tightly in place of holding Murdoc’s hips. Murdoc’s skin pinches and folds in parts along his waist, and Stu might wonder if her thighs could bruise him like this, if he were the sort of person who’d wonder that.

Paula’s hooded eyes glint and flicker to Stuart on particularly rough thrusts, parting her lips for him and telling him to _go on, let’s feel you then,_ but they drift most often to Murdoc’s face. Her head tilts to one side and the red of her smile cuts higher up her cheek. She slopes her shoulders back to glance between them and whisper crass remarks to the other man, looking entirely too glad at Murdoc’s keening and quivers, too glad at what should’ve been the disappointment of his cock nudging wholly out of her. She seems more interested in seeing Murdoc’s pleasure hung out so bare, seeing some private want in him split open and stuffed full.

Stuart hears Paula’s cooing exhale so much louder than he hears Murdoc’s choked groan. The planes of his back clench and stutter, sorry spots of muscle gathering in ridges below the skin, and Stu’s fingers dig harder under Paula’s knees. His spine slopes and his face mashes gracelessly against her shoulder, knees splaying outward beneath them and fists balling in the sheets as he comes.

Paula finally looks to him again, her wedged hand evidently working herself while the other pats Murdoc’s hair patronizingly. Stu moves faster, ignores Murdoc’s weakly craning neck and slack jaw at the edge of his vision, the black of his gaze trained on Paula’s teasing, panting mouth.

It doesn’t matter, he assures himself. Murdoc is a nuisance, an obstacle to be cleared. He’s _always_ been a barrier between them; this is no different.

He thinks he should pull out of the other man now, haul his spent body forward to reach a sorely-needing Paula. He thinks he should sheath himself in her, let her beg and appreciate the stretch of him at home in her unsatisfied cunt. He thinks he should prove to her what it is to be blissfully, thoroughly fulfilled by a star like Stuart.

His head falls back and his hands reflexively move from her knees to grip Murdoc’s arse and spread him wider. Murdoc trembles, spent body bowed, but he tries to lift his backside to meet him. To make it easy.

With an undignified whine, Stu finishes inside him.

`V.`

In the weeks after, he goes out for smokes instead of bumming them. He takes his pills earlier, and he sleeps in later. He makes excuses, and he wastes money, and he pretends his problem’s not a problem.

Stuart can’t let himself be alone with Murdoc. Paula doesn’t seem to have that trouble.

He feels her pulling further away day by day. The more he tries to fasten himself to her side, the more reason she finds to cut him loose. What amusement she’d found in his behavior that night drains at a rate of knots as Stu’s paranoia emerges in earnest, his sulking and hostility only widening the gap between them. She doesn’t understand the mistake Murdoc is and always will be. He wants to tell her she’s fucking her future up, that he’s going to be so much more than the girls back home knew, that she’ll be closer to the sun than she’s got any hope of being as long as she’s _his_— but he doesn’t know how to make that sound like love and not bargaining.

He still seeks windows into their private moments when he can, at late afternoon breakfasts or between lacklustre recording breaks, but the way they share a space now just seems unpleasantly habitual. It’s like the joke’s gone sour, but that’d never stop them seeking it; their humor’s been spoiled from the start. He sees a sort of destructive cruelty between them as much as he sees kinship.

In some ways that’s the worst of it: he’s not convinced she really likes Murdoc under her skirt as much as she just doesn’t want Stu holding down her hem. He doesn’t like that. He _really_ doesn’t like that.

Stu thinks they don’t even want to hide it when he sees them nipping off to the toilets, looking restless and heated and in want of something to break. Paula walks like she’s got purpose more than she’s got passion, and Murdoc— well, he makes a point of not noticing Murdoc. They’re too quiet to hear from the hall, but leaning against the door feels too much like he’s party to it.

He still wonders if they talk about him.

`VI.`

When she’s gone, Stu feels numb in a way he never has sober. He wants to cry, and he does. He wants to call his mum, and he doesn’t. He wants to make Murdoc bleed, grab him by the ears and nut him one, but he hasn’t actually been in a proper fight before and doesn’t fancy putting an eye out for good. And maybe, somewhere in the back of his mind, he wonders if all the knocking about’s made him something less than he should’ve been. Maybe he wonders if it’s why she isn’t here.

He settles for admiring Russ’s handiwork.

If Murdoc’s nose had _begun_ broken, it was obliterated now: bruises bloom from the flattened bridge and down over his cheeks, the darkest strokes of colour catching under his baggy eyes and pooling in the lines. Mostly that blood-black’s faded to a putrid yellow now, the hue of it almost making Murdoc’s skin look sickly and greenish. Stuart feels a bit ill looking at him, and feels a bit better too.

When Stu drags himself into the kitchen at noon and sees Murdoc sat at the table, colouring finally as overripe as his smell, he considers retreating back to his room for a cody and a very abrupt post-waking nap— but his blood sugar’s been tanking through the week and he’s well past his warning. There’s a box of rice puffs he’d stashed two scoops of dolly mix inside waiting for him in the cupboard, and despite his mum’s voice in his head fretting for his health or his petty theft, he knows he has nothing to justify. This is his home. It may look rather like the house that Jack built, a mildewy eyesore stood on yards of undeath, but it’s the house he’s staked his star on. Murdoc doesn’t get to take that from him too.

Murdoc doesn’t say a word as he strides past the table, but he can feel the other man’s eyes on him as he digs through the cabinets. He tucks the poorly resealed box under his arm while he grabs the milk from the fridge, gives it a sniff, and opts for dry cereal instead. He has every intention of fucking off right back to his room in silence, but—

“Where’s the party?”

Stu stills and weighs his options. He could ignore him; it’d worked alright so far. Whatever unspoken agreement there’d been to stay and make the music, make the money, and fuck the prom queen was starting to feel a bit moot the longer they carry on like this, though. After the initial bloodshed Russel had mostly kept his distance from the two’s turbulence, but he suspects he’ll have the other foot out the door soon. Stu doesn’t exactly pride himself on his smarts— he’s got far more valuable attributes than that— but he’s got enough to know a band can’t work this way.

Jaw barely moving, he grinds out “You need somethin’?”

“_Where’s the party, come on come on,_” he sort of rhymically says in an awful voice Stu’s reluctant to call singsong. When Stuart simply frowns at him, Murdoc offers “Madonna. Sit down.”

Stu holds eye contact. “I’m good here, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.”

The table’s in shoddy condition as ever, wooden legs nearly rotted enough to buckle. He’s got a plate of reddish beans and burnt toast sat mostly untouched before him, and a mug of something black like coffee but smelling of ferment and petrol; seeing his nostrils pinched shut under the flattened cartilage, Stuart wonders if he can smell anything at all. Murdoc shovels a spoonful of beans in his mouth as if to punctuate how perfectly comfortable he is, and Stu flips the fold of his cereal open.

“So am I just meant to stand here for your entertainment?”

“Well your top’s still on so I’m not getting my money’s worth, am I?” He takes a sip of his sludge. “You want I should take a picture?”

“Come next year y’can buy a poster.”

“Jesus, the head on you. Go on then, flatter yourself,” he grins.

“Anyone would,” Stu dismisses, standing taller and stuffing a sugary handful in his mouth.

“Right. Word of advice, this,” he gestures to Stuart’s stained Buggles shirt and flannel Christmas bottoms, “Not exactly the working woman’s wank material. Can’t say it’s doing much for your figure.”

“Can’t say my having eyeballs is doing much for yours.”

Murdoc’s jagged, toothy smile only deepens Stuart’s scowl. He wonders what about him seemed worth it. He wonders if he talked to Paula like this, so irreverent and wanting for abuse, like he was teflon and nothing she said would ever leave a mark; he wonders if that’s the appeal. Murdoc doesn’t get to joke like an off-the-record nosejob makes them square, doesn’t get to quip and cackle and make this easier on himself.

“We’re not alright,” Stu says, voice harsh but pitchy, “We’re not. You can sit there with your sad little cock in your hand and play your stupid fucking games like it’s all just a laugh, but you’re the joke. You got it? What I do here, s’gonna get me through doors they won’t let you loiter in the lot outside’a. All you are is lucky. You’re a selfish goddamn prick and a fucking joke. And you’re dead ugly.”

Murdoc runs his tongue over his teeth, making an obnoxious wet suckling sound before hiding it again behind his smirk.

“Got it. I’m a joke, of course, of course. Clown of the hour, me.” He leans forward. “Made Paula laugh though, didn’t it?”

Murdoc’s lips quirk as his eyes brighten, clearly satisfied by Stuart’s fuming. He poorly smoothes it down and Stuart knows his skin’s gone red and patchy, thoughts of throttling the other man hot at the back of his skull.

“Now you’ll hafta remind me, ‘cause I was too busy playing with my tiny, tiny little cock here t’notice, but— did _you_ make her laugh? Your, ah,” he makes a V with his fingers and crudely jabs his tongue between them, then sneers, “doesn’t count.”

Stuart tosses the cereal on the counter behind him and lurches over the table, hands splaying on either side of Murdoc’s breakfast. His face nearly throbs with the bloodrush and he looms close enough to bite, looking down his nose at the other.

He likes the way Murdoc flinches; he doesn’t know what to feel about the way his eyes fog.

“I’m not the loser here. Alright? The filthy fucking tosser, the— the open sore with the scrotty moptop, yeah, that sounds like a loser to me. I don’t lose to that. That’s not how it works.”

“Are we still on that? You looking for a prize? Christ, you’re actually _worse_ alone. Now she’s gone I almost miss her.”

“Do you? Or do you just miss having another opening to wriggle your foul fucking fingers into my life?”

Murdoc’s throat tightens to swallow. Stuart doesn’t really notice that he’s noticed, until he does.

“I sort of figured it’d be the other way around,” he says, head lolling to the side to openly study Stuart’s long knobby fingers in a tense grip on the table’s edge. Stu’s frown stretches outward with discomfort.

“Did you even like her?” He wishes his voice sounded harder, colder, not just reedy and hurt. Murdoc scoffs.

“What are you, twelve? If you had to like someone to shag them, I doubt I would’ve done it with you.”

Stu scrapes the table back the smallest bit as he shifts away, hands still locked on the edges. He looks past Murdoc at a peeling spot on the wall dotted with blackish mold. He’d like to scowl but he expects the twist of his frown is too uncomfortable to menace, the inside of his mouth feeling like crumpled tissue paper and tasting of candy and backwash. Murdoc just watches him, his own face painted plainly in bruising and nonchalance; it’s enough that Stuart reckons if he stares back too long he’ll spit. He greatly prefers the mold.

“You do get you’re not bloody Jagger, don’t you? S’just your big fucking head thinking someone cares where your knob’s gone. The two of us—”

“Three of us,” Stu corrects.

Murdoc lets his jaw dip open just enough, prodding his tongue against the edge of his mouth. The other side slowly tilts upward.

“Two now, isn’t it?”

“Two what?” He flicks his eyes up and down. “I count one man and some sagging scrap.”

Murdoc laughs, all crooked teeth and truly wrong-headed presumptions.

“Christ, you are twelve. You’re really bent the whole way ‘round about it, aren’t you?”

“I’m not fucking bent.”

“Oh, tetchy. Is little Stuey out of sorts ‘cause he can’t ring mummy about buggering his mate?” Stuart’s hold on the table tightens toward him again, spoon rattling on the plate with the pull.

“You’re not my mate. You’re fucked.”

Murdoc opens his legs a bit and pretends to check. “Not at the moment. Always up for a change of pace, though.” He grins, and Stuart pushes off the table. His eyes find the mold again.

Stu brings a hand to his hair, tugging the fringe stuck up and outward down to his brows, the pads of his fingers moving over his ears and the sides of his jaw, scrubbing the patchy hair above his lip and feeling the space where teeth should be with his tongue. It’s like he’s taking inventory of himself, making notes about the Stuart Pot he is now compared to the Stuart Pot he was fifteen months ago.

He can’t tell what’s been worse for him: the crashes or the breakup or the twat sat across the table. He doesn’t know if he’s become more different from the Stuart stood in Norm’s than alike. The Stuart he left minding the shop wouldn’t be having this chat; that Stuart wouldn’t have done anything to chat about.

“I’m not bent,” he repeats.

“I never said you were. You don’t…” For a blessed moment he goes quiet and simply studies Stu. “No one has to be.”

Stuart can’t see where they go from here. The road forks quite clearly in two directions, but neither are an option to him.

“I loved her.” He says it through tight lips, like it’s something damning.

“Not sure where you’ve gotten the idea that matters,” Murdoc mutters as he shoves more beans in his mouth, “Wasn’t much about love.”

Stuart’s voice is scalding in his throat.

“No, I s’pose shagging my girlfriend was just some fantasy about what you don’t have to be.”

Murdoc’s expression is unreadable. He forces a smirk, mostly just baring his teeth at Stu.

“Right, so me and you, we’re playing with different rules then? Stupid question. You’re making them, of course we are.”

Stu presses an arm across his middle and looks sidelong. “Just forget it.”

“Y’know, you’ve got some real fuckin’ nerve callin’ me a poof in that shirt. Left your Kajagoogoo in the wash?”

“I never said you were a poof.”

“But you reckon I am. You were there as well, you’ll recall— tall fellow, funny eyes, had the brown jacket and his cock up my arse. Have you forgotten that bit?”

“I wasn’t the one—” Stu doesn’t think he needs to say it.

“You were just the one fucking the poof, yeah? What’s that make you?” he spits. “And you say I’m a joke. Get the fuck outta my face.”

“I was _fucking_ my girlfriend. You were just in the goddamned way, like you always are!” He seethes. “Guess I should spot you for that, yeah? Cheaper than a rubber, aren’t you?”

Stu half expects Murdoc to take a swing at him, but instead he visibly shudders and straightens a bit in his chair, neck sloping back just enough to suggest. He brings one hand to his mouth and rubs the stubbled skin there while the other balls into a fist beside his plate, knuckles curling against the wooden tabletop. His gaze on Stuart is hot in a way Stuart doesn’t want to understand.

His eyes flicker to the doorway briefly but pointedly.

“We could.” Murdoc says, voice low. He doesn’t dress it up, make a joke, make it obscene. He doesn’t even really say it. “I would.”

Stuart doesn’t give himself the space to think about it. “I wouldn’t.”

“That’s fine. M’not losing any fucking sleep over it.” The sneer he forces seems petty and foul. “Seeing as she was through the door with one leg still out her knickers, I doubt Paula’s been either.”

He snickers to himself and Stu feels the sting of bile bubbling. He tallies up Murdoc’s sallow skin and greasy hair, his teeth like splintered trees and voice like a boat motor, all the vile words that pour from him like contaminant in the water. He sits before him as swampland, more an unkempt marsh than a man. And Paula still made her choice. Stu swallows thickly, thinking for a moment he really will be sick, and blinks away the pricking feeling behind his eyes.

“What the hell did she see in you?” He croaks.

Murdoc’s lips are pencil-thin around his smile. “Must be something she didn't see in you.”

In an instant Stu jerks forward, stretching across the table and grabbing Murdoc’s mug. For a moment he imagines cracking it across the other man’s mangled face. He tilts it over his plate, warm black liquid pouring steadily like a stream of tar onto his beans and toast. It spills over the sides and onto the table, little waterfalls finding the nearest edge and dribbling onto Murdoc’s jeans. Neither break the stare as Stu lets the empty mug drop with a wet thump.

“Thank fucking God for that.”

`VII.`

As hard as it is for him to accept, the band carries on without Paula. They’d put out an ad for a guitarist in NME (Stuart had waved his approval of the draft and offered no input on Murdoc’s obnoxious humor) and only days later a young girl stood at their doorstep with a magazine and a Les Paul. She spoke little-to-no English but seemed unconcerned with the barrier, simply pointing to the ad and playing them a tight, dizzying solo. She made the cut that day with relatively little protest— much less than there frankly should have been between responsible adults. Bizarrely, it doesn’t actually seem so bizarre to him. Her presence has them all standing a bit straighter, smiling a bit longer, and making efforts not to leave narcotics on the coffee table. They call themselves Gorillaz, with a z, and things feel... different, in ways. In ways he feels no different at all. They’re more cohesive in the studio now, but the studio isn’t his life. Most often he’s alone, passing his time the usual ways.

Stu quite likes the paint set aside for the bathroom, finds the colour a charming sort of blue that reminds him of nothing, but inhalants sometimes hit too sharp like lightning behind his eyes. He has a percocet for the pain, and K with his perc, and melts a handful of foam shrimp into his herbal tea; his mum always said sugar helped his headaches, but mostly he thinks it helped with all the nodding off at supper.

He’d spent the better part of his evening in bed, staring at the ceiling and chasing spots at the edge of his vision. He begins counting his teeth and chips in the plaster, then pivots to keyboards he’s owned and girls he’s felt up. He doesn’t really feel sad, exactly, he just feels like the world’s gone slower around him. He enjoys slow, he’s always enjoyed slow— but in moments (in short, sharp, post-huffing moments) there’s this tingling current he can imagine travels along his veins. It makes him want for something more.

Stu staggers out of bed to pop in a cassette, dropping down to the bottom shelf and finding Brian Eno next to Sugarhill Gang and Kraftwerk stuck between ABBA and INXS, no system to the litter of tapes. Without his mum prompting him to tidy up he kept a bit more mess day to day, but Stu’d once enjoyed overparticular hobbies like synth repair and mechanical work; sorting parts to fix the whole wasn’t so foreign to him, he just hadn’t been particularly incentivized to lately. Now, the promise of distraction is plenty incentive.

He still figures he might as well put on a record while he’s futzing with the cassettes. Stu hovers over the aging sleeves for _Quadrophenia_ and _Electric Ladyland_ before deciding he’s got no one to impress and throwing on the Human League’s _Dare._

The album starts with simple stomping percussion and boppy synth, and it sounds like comfort food to him.

As he dumps the plastic chaos into a pile on the dirty carpet, he imagines Gorillaz-with-a-z opening for the Human League, imagines himself shaking Phil Oakey’s hand by the kettle backstage while he fixes his cuppa. Oakey’s a touch hoarse from performing so he tells him in a soft, private voice how he’d hoped they’d get a chance to talk, star to star. He quite likes Stuart’s singing and his look, and he thinks it’d be a real treat if Stu’d come back out for Don’t You Want Me tomorrow night in Glasgow, just for a laugh, just for a few photos, give the paps a little thrill—

By the time Do or Die finishes and he’s got to flip the record, he’s mostly separated the clutter into sections. They’re still in disarray as he finds himself struggling to order them correctly after the first letters, but he’s got his Ultravox before his World Party and his World Party before his XTC so he figures he’s doing something right. He shuffles the lot of Soft Cell and assorted interlopers he’s managed to scoop up between his hands, thumbing a stray out from between The Stranglers and Suede while he mutters the alphabet under his breath.

He’s silently debating whether it’s really fair Garfunkel should have to go after Simon when he spots The Slits’s _Cut_ nestled into the lineup.

Heart suddenly in his throat, he lets his tapes clatter to the floor as he flips the casing around to lie flat in his palm. He traces the tiny cover photo of the girls stood topless, defiant and punkish and rather perky. The current vibrates up his veins until it’s rattling in his skull, sending his teeth and ears buzzing.

The paint makes his trajectory feel a bit blurry. One moment he’s digging in the back of his sock drawer for an old cocktail napkin, and the next he’s at Russ’s bedside, clutching the man’s corded telephone. He tries to hold his breath and slow his shivering but it only makes everything faster and louder inside. He’s worried a person in earshot would hear his blood moving under the skin.

“Russel.” He’s answered with a deep hum. “Russel, come on now, I— it’s Stu, it’s Stuart, I need your help.”

With a heavy hand trailing to his face and rubbing his eyes, Russel pushes himself up. His features are still weighted with sleep, but he blinks through to study Stuart.

“What’s wrong?” He must take in Stuart’s jittering and connects the dots, sitting straighter. “Do I need to call someone?”

“Call Paula.” He says, and Russel’s face settles. It strikes a very wrong note in Stu. “Please. Please, I need you to ring her.”

Russel watches him, gaze white and unreadable. Stu supposes this must be what it’s like when his parents or his mates look into his own eyes now and see nothing of guidance, nothing they’re hoping to see.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He thrusts the cocktail napkin at him. “The number’s here, jus— just punch it in, I’ll talk to her.”

“Listen, you’re a grown man and I can’t tell you—”

“S’important Russ. Y’know I, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“I don’t want to get involved in this, man. That’s your mistake to make, you do it on your own.”

“Ring her!” He shouts, his voice shrill as squealing tires.

“_Hey._ Calm down. Look at me.” His tremors jostle the phone, the receiver clacking quietly against the base. “Stu, look at me. How much’ve you had?”

“M’fine. My head’s clean an’ cotton, I feel fucking dandy, ring her.”

“And what happens then?”

“None of your bloody concern.”

“You come up in my space strung out and asking favors, that makes it my concern.”

“Dial the goddamned number, Russ!”

“If you’re fine, you can dial it—”

“I _can’t!_ I can’t because Murdoc hit me with his _fucking_ car and I lost the _fucking_ luxury!” He howls. His grip’s gone sloppy from his shaking and the receiver falls to the floor, curled cord bouncing in between. “And then he did it again! And then, oh, then he fucked my girlfriend in the toilets, and now she’s gone and I’ve got her tape and _I can’t fucking dial it!_”

He wishes he could hear something aside from his own desperate breath wheezing through the gap his missing teeth leave. It’s dim in the room, but not so dim to spare him the shame of being seen. Russel looks at him like the PT nurses did by his tenth, maybe twelfth week back in hospital after waking: like he’s not getting better. It’s not a great weeping sort of sorrow, but a small and uncomfortable pity. It’s wishing to look elsewhere. It’s wishing Stuart would do more to right himself and function normally, like decent people do, out of respect for their watching. That look is worse to him than his mum’s living-mourning ever was.

“Yeah, alright, I’ve had some pills! Stu’s done something for Stu, terrible bloody scandal, what’s it matter? I’ve had them because he did this to me!” Stuart slaps his chest as hard as he can muster like this, making an underwhelming sound on impact. It’s still enough to hurt, and he fails to cover a wince at the sting thrumming over his sternum.

Russel exhales deeply through his nose, eyes dropping from Stu’s face to the napkin quivering at him. Wordlessly, he leans forward to pick the handset off the floor. He flips on his bedside lamp and squints, illuminating the phone number scrawled across the long-dried imprint of her drink. Stu studies the taxidermied starling on his nightstand while he punches it in. After a first misread attempt, Russel reaches out to hold Stuart’s wrist still.

The second try evidently takes as he checks briefly for a service tone, then passes the receiver to Stuart. He slurs his thanks as he darts from his bedside, but Russel simply looks ahead and says nothing.

Stu stumbles around the doorframe and as far into the hallway as the phone cord allows, pressing his back flat against the wall. He doesn’t think about Russ listening in from the other side, or young Noodle overhearing his voice so late in the night and not understanding why; the ringing in and out of his head deafens everything but a quiet gratitude that Murdoc’s room sits far, far below.

“—ck's sake, it’s three in the bloody morning. The fuck’s this and the fuck you want?”

It takes a minute for him to breathe again.

“Paula.” He doesn’t ask, just states. Just remembers how her name feels in his mouth.

There’s a lengthy pause, then he hears her exhale. “Jesus…”

“It’s Stuart.”

“_I know_ it’s you Stuart, fuck’s sake. Why’re you calling me?”

“I’ve… you… you’ve been alright then? You sound alright.”

“C’mon, don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“This, what you’re doing now, calling me up. It’s pitiful, puts me in mind of sad dogs at the station.”

“Which station?”

“Any station, genius, means they’re abandoned. What d’you want?”

Petulance pinches his brow. “You could _act_ like you’ve got the time for me. I think you owe me that.”

“You got a clock in that landfill or d’you just draw a little sundial on yourself and wait to pop a stiffy? S’not even dawn, I’m not making time for a line and an orgasm right now.” Her bedding rustles in the receiver and he wonders what colour it is, wonders what she’s wearing to bed when she’s alone; he wonders if she _is_ alone. “So again I ask, nicely: the fuck d’you want?”

He wants her to regret it. He wants her to have wanted any of it differently.

“I just want to talk.”

“We can talk in the morning, be nice if I’d gotten the memo to get trollied first as well. Or better yet, never.”

The paint-pill-powder cocktail is sitting uncomfortably and he feels pressure growing from the back of his tongue, and then he’s asking “Why would you make me second place?” before he can think not to.

A car horn honks somewhere across the line, and Kong creaks in perpetual settling. It sounds like her flat’s just over the street. He doesn’t even know for certain she’s in Essex anymore, but he can’t picture her anywhere else.

“I’m not doing this right now.” He imagines he can hear her fingers rubbing her temples.

“Sorry, are you not? That’s funny, see, I— I am. I am ‘cause I’m not, I’m not fucking second place. You— you just get to say I’m the loser, no one tallyin’ the scores, so I’m the loser? What’s the fuckin’ sense in that, bugger all to my say then?”

“You absolute twat, d’you hear yourself? D’you think this is attractive? You think it’s my dream to sleep in your spunk sheets and pin a darling _Kept It Up On the Oxy, Well Done_ badge to your sash?” Stu’s frown sinks. “What’s on me is on me, alright? But your little pissing contest, that’s not. That’s on you. You rigged that track yourself; go figure if no one wants to play on it.”

Stu hears her, but her words seem muffled as the air thickens inside; he’s got clouds turning to fog turning to chlorine in his throat.

“Was it that bad? Dating the fuckin’ frontman, bein’ a part of this, was it really such bloody hardship?” He swipes at his eyes furiously, hands and face feeling bubbly below the surface, but he can’t really tell if he’s crying. Paula seems to have trouble discerning that as well. She starts and stops, and that might be an offer of pity as much as it’s checking for exits.

“What are you hoping t’hear, Stuart?” Her voice is weary but firm. “What’s any of it matter? Even if I said I’d take it back, does it really unring that bell?”

Stu feels his pockets for his tablets, snots on his lip a bit, and doesn’t answer.

“Look, you can ask me to be sorry if y’have to, but it won’t mean what you want it to mean. Alright?” Paula pauses, gives him the space to agree and surely notes that he doesn’t. “If that’s it then—”

“You left your tapes,” he stumbles out.

“What?”

“Tape, your tape. One, er, just one. Just one that I’ve spotted. Cassette, I mean.”

“Why’re you— Jesus, Stuart, why would you care?”

“Because it’s yours.”

She must lower the phone as he hears her mutter ‘Christ,’ sounding muted and above him as she does. She comes back clearer with “It’s not mine.”

“It is, it’s The Slits. It’s the one...” It’s the one Murdoc picked.

“The Slits,” she echoes, seeming unconvinced.

“Y’know I, I knew you liked them. I knew that too. S’not anything, doesn’t mean anything. Picked one stupid sodding tape, like that’s some bloody feat, it was— it’s just ‘cause it’s got tits on the front. I know what you like, I could— I can—”

“Stu, fuck’s sake, stop it. Stop. You need to sleep ‘til you’ve come down.”

“I’ll decide what I need, alright?” He snaps, but his voice cracks like a child’s. “You— you need to get your tape.”

He hears the flick of a lighter.

“It’s not mine. I wouldn’t...” She pauses and he can hear her breathe a sigh away from the mouthpiece; he pictures the smoke clouding around her cheekbones, imagines what it’d be like to smell it in her hair. “I wouldn’t have mixed anything of mine with yours. Wouldn’t set myself up for all the bollocks sorting it back out, bollocks like this charming call.”

He listens, but he doesn’t. “It’s yours,” he insists.

“It might be Murdoc’s.” Her voice almost lilts and it makes his stomach lurch.

“It isn’t Murdoc’s!” He spits, shrill and furious. “It’s yours! It’s yours, it’s your sodding tape, and you don’t just get to leave me with it!”

“Fine, you bloody child, say it’s mine! Why should it matter? Bin it.”

“No, you don’t bin it. You don’t fucking _bin it._ You don’t bin the best goddamn thing that’s ever going to happen t’you! You weren’t thinking, you don’t think around him ‘cause that’s what he does, and— and you left it, you left it and you’ll want it back. It’s yours and you’ll miss it, and you’ll—” He’s certain he’s crying now. “You’ll want it back.”

“Stuart.”

She says his name like he’s such a simple thing. His head’s thick with smoke from the war in all the rest of him. He feels the humiliation like a fire catching and for a moment he’s sure it’s going to burn him up, he’s sure his blood’ll boil at the rate his heart’s moving, faster, faster—

But in truth, it all slows for so little. It slows and it cools and it just goes quiet in pieces. He doesn’t know if that’s really about understanding, or just about knowing when something’s done.

Maybe he’s meant to try harder. Maybe his dad would’ve told him to bash on until he won her back, her hands finding his jaw with an incredulous laugh, finally loving him for being steady, being always. Maybe hers would’ve respected him for it, told him he was decent, invited him down for a pint on a rainy Thursday and slipped him the family ring.

Or maybe his dad can’t talk to him without something to hammer in between them, and her dad’s just a birthday card signed _Mitch_ with no surname. Maybe she never asked him for always, and maybe he’s not the Stuart who gets he was meant for.

She lets him sniffle and settle in the static for a while.

“Bin it,” she says at length, then the call disconnects.

`VIII.`

The long weeks turn to short months. In time his tapes reshuffle, Russ uses up the last of his nothing-blue paint, and things get better. They’re not _good,_ mind— they’re still two blocks down and across an open sinkhole from good— but they’re better. He’s not sitting in the lowest pits of Kong on Murdoc’s stinking sofa because they’ve decided to be bezzies, but he’s down here because Murdoc’s got decent weed, and because retiring young to untold riches and foreign supermodels probably means getting on with your bandmates once in a while, and because things are— in the very, very relative sense— better.

He doesn’t really forgive him, but that feels alright. There is no forgiving with Murdoc. Stuart reckons most anyone who’s ever dealt with the man recognizes the difference between loving it and living with it. So he’s here.

They’ve already split a joint and a half for the evening; Stuart rolled the second while Murdoc fetched him a Stella from upstairs and, judging by the amount of gum showing in his smile, did a bump on the way. Murdoc cracks the top with his too-long nail and Stu’d really rather he didn’t, but he at least does him the courtesy of not crudely slurping the lip before Stu can grab it. They smoke mostly in silence, Stu seeking any distraction from the dampness where both their mouths have touched the paper. The room’s occultish aura is lost in the collections of shite, putting Stu more in mind of a miserly magpie. Finding his feet with joint in hand, he roams the menagerie of rubbish; he takes in the scattering of black and off-black clothes, the women’s undergarments and clearly nicked wallets, the stacks of cassettes and records framing a hoarder’s lot of blown-out speakers, the naughty pinups stuck on the wall with googly-eyes drawn over top. Stu tries to count the liquor bottles dashed in the rubble, but loses track so quickly that he’s not sure who that reflects worse on. He eyes a shelf of bobbins and books; books which he suspects have probably never been opened. He strains to read the maybe-German writing along one spine and knows Murdoc certainly can’t.

He pinches at the sides of the joint to keep it compact, the seam already compromised. Stu’s rolled it tight, twisted it well— the lessened dexterity never left him a slouch with his hash— it’s just that he always packs down too much, fills ‘til it’s overfull. It’s only Murdoc’s weed, for one, but mostly he just doesn’t see the good of ‘making do.’ Stu’s never really bought that less is more; it shouldn’t be, not for someone like him.

“You off somewhere? Give it here then,” Murdoc says from the sofa. Stuart doesn’t turn his head but blindly passes it back to him, a few dry dark crumbs apparently spilling out. “Oh you twat, I paid for that!” Murdoc gripes. Stu can hear how he’s smiling, though.

Stu studies the broken picture frame hung on the wall, the bottom edge snapped off and glass held in place by tape (not especially well, based on the cracks running all the way up.) Whatever filled it originally was now replaced by a smaller black and white photo of a woman, nude, with her arms crossed over her chest. There’s a signature, but he can’t make it out for the shattered glass over top; it looks like ‘Brett.’ She’s quite tidy, good body, modish hair and pushbroom eyes like Twiggy. He reckons he’s seen her before, but can’t place where.

“Had her?” he asks, knowing Murdoc’s made a hobby of lying about shagging celebs.

“Not yet, in due time. You like her?”

“She's alright. Brett sounds like a bloke’s name.”

“Britt, you git. She was a bloody Bond girl. Have you really not seen the Wicker Man?”

Stu shrugs, figuring he might’ve on his tablets once and just can’t remember. Murdoc pops the joint in his mouth and gestures toward the cabinet the comically-old television’s sat on top of.

“Probably in there somewhere. Y’can have it.”

The cabinet’s rather shabby and made of cheap wood painted with a darker varnish to look pricier, one of the doors broken off the hinge and hanging open to show half a row of movies. The titles Stu recognizes are mostly musician biopics and sexploitations. Stu pulls the other door open and skims the collection for a glimpse of Britt’s baps, but his eyes catch on an unmarked cardboard box tucked away on the bottom row. Stu doesn’t have to ask, doesn’t have to check, barely even has to think to know it’s porn.

“If you’re looking for some Living Dead shite, keep looking.” Stu glances over his shoulder to meet his stare. The older man stubs the joint, holding the look just long enough before drifting sidelong. Stu waits to slide the box out until he’s faced fully away again.

Of course he’s got a porn stash, it’s not like Stu doesn’t. It’s normal. It is.

It just doesn’t feel like it.

He looks over the aged VHS tapes, marked with handwritten labels on cracked cream-coloured masking tape. They have titles like _Haus of Straps, Mistress Says Down,_ a smattering in what looks like butchered Russian, and one chillingly called _Cock Flogging_ that tightens his thighs together around his crotch. A bulk of tapes in the middle are left noticeably vague, marked only with the letter _G;_ Stu’s fingers move swiftly past them.

“Haven’t you got anything normal?”

“Normal as in controlled voltage?”

“Normal as in normal. As in big tits and no maiming.”

“Piss on my chips then.”

Stu keeps his back turned to the other.

Murdoc grouses under his breath, hoisting himself off the sofa and taking a knee beside him. He studies the box, edges of his mouth twitching and eyes not meeting Stu’s. His small sharp fingers seem to stall over the titles, hovering like he’s debating whether to play his hand or not. Murdoc taps a tape wedged at the opposite end of the box, the label seeming more yellowed than the rest. It’s marked simply _Billy’s._

He wets his lips and finally chances a look up.

“Good memories with that one,” he offers enigmatically, and Stu swallows the question down.

Without another word, Stu pries the tape out and just shoves the box aside rather than storing it back beneath the telly stand. He switches the set on and avoids meeting Murdoc’s eyes as the older silently guides himself back onto the sofa. He thinks he can read Murdoc’s hopeful energy and promptly opts not to.

Stu pops the previous tape out of the VCR and pretends he doesn’t notice the _G._

The film opens with crackling chatter and snowy static lines. The picture clears up only marginally by the time he’s settled back, blondish swathes pouring over peachy pink as hair and skin slowly find shape. The age still shows across the film, images cast in warm yellowy hues and edges wobbling, their lines alight with refracted colours. She’s cute, but well in Stu’s league, her stick-straight hair parted right down the middle and full breasts teasing below her hiked jumper. If he had to guess, he’d say it’s amateur and filmed some years back; he grows surer as her fingers delve into her bush, the camera diving after them. The bloke fondling her thighs has dark hair and broad shoulders, his width broken up with tanlines and blurry tattoos. Stu tries to minimize his awareness of him. It’s not usually so difficult to do but Murdoc’s rigid frame, just a foot from him across the stained and stinking cushions, feels like lead weighing the entire room down.

The man’s hands brush her stomach and she laughs at the tickling touch, and then her jumper’s over her head. Her hair’s messy and cornfield-blonde and reminds him of every girl he’d ever wanked to in school. Rough hands are turning her to show the camera her arse before she scoots away playfully and opens her legs. Murdoc’s stare feels as heavy as a hand on his groin, and he wishes the other’s near-tangible wanting didn’t make him harder.

She’s spread eagle and knuckle-deep in herself with his cock rutting against her arse when Stu begins to palm himself through his trousers. The temperature beside him tips from simmering to boiling, Murdoc’s eyes feverish on all his plainest crooks and bends. He wonders if he’s ever really watched someone that way. He wonders how Paula felt when Stu looked at her, if she recognized what it was to be wanted _so fucking much._

It isn’t like he meant for tonight to go this way— isn’t like he wants things to be like this with Murdoc, it’s just—

It’s just that things are like this with Murdoc. Things will always be like this with Murdoc. It will never be exactly what he wants, because the Stuart who gets to know what he wants isn’t the Stuart Murdoc’s made him. Still, it’s grown clearer now that the having isn’t so different from the wanting; he’s starting to think pretending otherwise is just doing him one less favor.

“Stuart.”

His voice is raspy and small, and Stu thinks it’s unfair to ask him to say it. He shouldn’t have to, not when Murdoc’s the one on the other end of it.

“Stuart,” he repeats, lower.

Murdoc’s hand touches his forearm first, testing, then drags down to cover Stu’s own hand on his crotch.

“M’not asking for fucking conversation here, Stu, I’ve just got to know where the fence is if I’m meant to swing for it.” He scowls, then swallows and presses harder. Stu can feel how balmy his hand his, can feel the pleading in his grip. “Told you I would. Just tell me I should.”

Instead Stu frees his pinned hand so Murdoc’s palming him openly. He’s hot and he’s cold at once, and the feeling in his stomach is a bit like seasickness. He works up a braver man’s voice and asks, “D’you want to be useful?”

His breath slows along with his groping, gaze darkening appreciatively. The two sit in silence for a beat, and then two, and then Murdoc’s wordlessly dropping to the floor.

Murdoc keeps eye contact as he nudges Stu’s bony knees apart, and Stu breaks it the moment foreign fingers find his zipper. He looks back to the video instead.

Stu watches the girl’s tits going up and down, the corners of the screen all fuzzy around their shape, as Murdoc works his jeans open. The head that dips over him is black and choppy and almost familiar, and he makes a point not to watch. Murdoc wastes little time; there’s a hand on his thigh and a mouth on his cock while his eyes follow the lines of her body distorted on the screen. He thinks about Kim, and about Courtney, and about fragile Fiona. He thinks about Claire Sommerton, who babysat him a half-dozen times and always had a bit of midriff showing. He thinks about the busty blonde who called the weather on ITV before the downgrade, and about the leggy Indian girl who worked the bookies up the street from Norm’s, and about Britt with her top off on the wall. He wants to think about anything but Paula’s red lips and sharp voice— until there’s a choked sound from his crotch, and he looks down to see Murdoc briefly pulling off and wiping a sloppy trail of saliva from his chin before stuffing his wet fingers down the front of his own jeans, and suddenly Stu’d like _very much_ to think of Paula.

She arches on the man’s lap and Stu notices how the backlighting halos her blonde hair, catching the flyaway strands and making them glow. His eyes drift to the glass frame on the wall, but he can’t see his reflection from this angle; even when he cranes his neck, he only sees the edge of a table lamp too far over his left shoulder, sitting off-center on a stack of boxes by the bed. The shade’s been lost in the chaos, and the round of the bulb is fried black. Murdoc touches his balls and he bucks.

“How’m I gonna look on stage?” He chokes out suddenly. He can hear Paula exhaling in his head, and it sends him in gooseflesh behind the ears.

Murdoc hums around him and Stu swallows hard. “Hey.” He shifts until his knee’s pressing into the other man and urges him up with it. Murdoc pulls off with a keening, desperate noise.

He holds the base of Stu's cock while Stu keeps his eyes on her head lolled forward, her hair illuminated like white gold. The simple overhead light seems blinding, seems heavenly.

“You said it when we met. You— you said it that night.” That light would be endless in his eyes. “Say it again.”

He doesn’t look to him. He can feel Murdoc’s eyes on his face, but he stares ahead, short shallow breaths panting too loudly from his nose.

“Hey,” Murdoc beckons, his voice so hoarse it’s vulgar. Stuart’s lip quivers. His grip could pierce the sofa’s scratchy cushion.

He looks down without hurry to find Murdoc staring reverently up at him, knelt like something so pious and small between his legs. His eyes are heavy and worshipful, and Stu’s cock is pressing a wet spot against his cheek. The sight makes him twitch, and Murdoc breathes raggedly at the feeling.

“You’ll be a god,” he says, and nothing else.

Stu’s eyes flutter, lips disappearing between his teeth. He lifts a shaking hand and, like a gift, threads his fingers through Murdoc’s hair.

With a rumbling and thankful sound, Murdoc drags his cheek and the side of his nose against his cock and takes him in his mouth again. His hands practically cross around his hips, pulling himself closer as he tries his best to bury Stuart in his throat.

It becomes too much to watch her bouncing on the screen so Stu lets his head drop back, fingers twisting in Murdoc’s hair. He can feel the other man rutting into the front of the sofa. Murdoc can’t swallow him to the base, but Stu trembles at knowing how much he wants to.

Breath hitching, Stu comes with a silent gasp.

Stu stares up at the ceiling, faintly aware of the pleasured sounds Murdoc’s making. His fingers loosen, and he can feel the small chunks of hair still clinging between them with sweat. He begins to pull away when Murdoc grabs his wrist and mashes Stu’s hand back down into his hair, begging; he stays there, hunched between Stuart’s knees, face pressed hotly against his thigh while he jerks himself to completion.

When he’s caught his breath, Murdoc slowly lifts himself back onto the sofa, wiping his hand as he goes. Stu’s eyes have gone dry memorizing the spots in the paint above. He chances a look to the other and sees Murdoc pick up Stuart’s tepid Stella and take a swig, swishing it in his mouth and letting it drain thickly back into the can. Stuart grimaces at his nasty grin.

The high moaning from the television speakers makes him too aware of himself and he stumbles over to shut it off, soft cock still hanging out his jeans. Murdoc laughs at him when he nearly trips, his throat sounding raw and used. It only makes Stuart’s own tighten.

“Y’alright?” Murdoc asks.

“Yeah,” Stu says distantly, tucking himself back into his trousers. He takes a few unsteady steps toward the doorway, hands still fumbling to fasten his zip.

“You leaving?”

“Yeah.”

He doesn’t, though. He shuffles, and then he stops, and then he lingers still and quiet between the sofa and the door.

Murdoc carries on as if Stuart were a coat rack in the corner of the room. He gathers up the papers and tin left between them and begins to roll another joint, sloppy and understuffed and lousier with stems than he’d prefer. Stu’s eyes follow his tongue where it runs slowly along the edge of the paper.

He can only think of it leaving behind the taste of warm Stella and Stuart’s spunk.

He’s sure Murdoc means to do it when he twists the ends loosely and presses the whole seam against his mouth again for good measure. Thin fingers tap and glide over the same trail two, three, four times more, flattening the paper and patting any tackiness away. He then lights it, taking a short inhale and wordlessly watching Stuart stay, stiff and towering where he stands. Smoke billows from his parted lips, cloudy-white and hung low so that for a strangely still moment, Stuart loses everything but his eyes. When the thick of it disperses, Murdoc looks the same as he ever did. He angles the joint toward Stuart.

“You gonna siddown then?” Murdoc asks like it doesn’t matter; like maybe it’s better not to. Like what he’s said tonight will still be true tomorrow, and maybe the threat of mattering only makes that matter more.

Stuart again feels the spaces where teeth should be with his tongue. He touches his fringe, pulls it down and forward, cards his fingertips through the shaggy sides. He roughs out shapes for the Stuart he is now compared to the Stuart he was twenty minutes ago; he blankets himself in the slick of his gums and the itch of his stubble, in the great flatness of his hands and the knobbiness of his knees. He takes stock of all that hasn’t changed to muffle the wondering of what has.

He swallows and pretends it’s only the cheap, stemmy weed drying his throat.

“...Yeah, alright.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I know this isn't necessarily everyone's cuppa, so I thank you for sticking through. Feedback is really appreciated!
> 
> If you'd like to, you can also pal around and say hello at tothedarkdarkseas.tumblr.com!


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